bracken

In cadence, that reminds me of one of my favorite first lines (which has nothing to do with bracken), from One Hundred Years of Solitude:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

One of my favorite first lines of any book is this--and the last time I read it was 1988, so imagine the impression it left on me then:

"Gavin Cameron, who was eleven years old and would one day become Bishop of Scotland, pulled his dagger from between the man's ribs and wiped it clean on the bracken."

That's all I know about bracken. Wow! (From Reay Tannahill, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, which I won't ever read again for fear it will suck.)

All together now! We sometimes refer to these plants as bracken fern in Australia. Possibly to distinguish them from other types of fern, eg. tree fern, maidenhair fern, cell fern, etc.

I think the sea serpents might be kraken. We have bracken in Ireland as well, mainly in the bogs. It was also the name of a TV soap opera.

To me, the word bracken conjures up images of sea serpents and Grecian mythology. I've only ever heard of these plants being called ferns.

According to Mencken, we call them ferns. (I've never heard bracken used over here.) I associate this word with Scotland and heath for some reason.

Surprised to see this on arby's list of Britlish. What's the American word?

I grew up surrounded by this stuff (Weirdnet makes no sense as usual) and spent summers hacking it down with stick and scythes and autumn weekends inhaling its carcinogenic spores.